HARTFORD -- Opponents of genetically modified organisms -- or GMOs -- signaled a new push for a state food-labeling law with a rallying meeting at the Legislative Office Building Thursday attended by activists, legislators, chefs, farmers and even the sponsor of last year's bill, newly retired Dick Roy of Milford.

Last year's bill failed to make it to a vote, with legislative lawyers reportedly balking at "liabilities" that could be exploited by GMO seed maker Monsanto. Republican State Rep. Tony Hwang of Trumbull praised Roy for reaching across the aisle on the bill and helping legislators get educated on the issue. "This is a basic... right of a person to know what they're eating," he said.

This year's versions of the bill will be introduced by Rep. Phil Miller, D-Essex, and Diana Urban, D- North Stonington, in separate committees.

"So we're preparing it right now to leave them with as little to do to fix it," said Miller, "and our bill very closely resembles the ones going forth in Maine, Vermont and New Jersey."

Genetically engineered or modified organisms are engineered to withstand direct application of herbicide and sometimes to produce their own insecticide.

Monsanto has told the Register that GMOs are safe, based on studies done in other countries, and said the GM seeds increase yields, withstand drought and are so widely used - in the likes of corn, soybeans, canola, cottonseed and sugar beets -- that it would be costly and impractical to do labeling.

Opponents dispute many of those claims and say what may have begun with good intentions is now companies just protecting their investment.

Miller, noting some don't consider it a state issue, said federal regulators at the Food and Drug Administration have "shown they will not apply their own science to this subject, and more than 20 years ago, they just casually gave it a GRAS rating, or generally recognized as safe."

The legislator, who represents the Haddam area, said, "there's a huge, growing body of anecdotal evidence that links GMOs, in about 70 percent of our food supply, to respiratory, gastrointestinal, behavior issues. And physicians find that when people either reduce or eliminate (GM) foods from their diets, their symptomology disappears or diminishes greatly."

Duesing said GMOs being in so much of the food supply "is a very large, uncontrolled experiment with human health. The vast amount of GMO crops are designed as sales tools for specific herbicides. The majority of those sales tools are for Roundup (which) kills most green plants that haven't been engineered to resist it." He said herbicide use has increased by a half-billion pounds, according to one study, and traces are getting into people's bodies.

Cook-Littman, a former prosecutor, held up a snack food package that read "organic" and "all natural" but on the back also reads, "canola or soybean oil," which are made from GMO seeds. She admitted "the jury may still be out on whether we can definitively say that GMOs are harming us, I have read enough studies to raise serious doubt in my mind as to whether GMOs are safe for anyone to consume."

Labeling, she said, "is such a simple request."

Miller said, "We want consumers to make an educated choice, and 62 countries have labeling requirements."

He said the bill will be screened for other public health panel leadership and then brought to a public hearing.

"And then we still have a tough row to hoe; we've even got to convince our leaders and peers to call it in the first place," Miller said. "For a lot of people, the very idea that big agri-business, who we've trusted all our lives - you know, the cereal we ate as kids - that they would do anything that would not be in our best interest, to some people is just a foreign idea and engenders a response that is almost angry."